Fourth Down! E-Book

Ralph Henry Barbour

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

We ought to be there in about twenty minutes,” observed Arnold Deering, glancing at his watch.
One of his companions in the day-coach tossed the magazine he had been idly glancing through, to the top of the pile of suitcases beside him, yawned widely, and nodded without enthusiasm.
“If nothing happens,” he agreed.
“What’s going to happen, you chump?”
“Nothing, I suppose. Only, something might. There might be an earthquake, or the train might jump the track, or——”
“Or you might talk sense, Frank! As for jumping the track, this old train couldn’t jump a crack in the floor! I guess you’re wishing something would happen so you wouldn’t have to go back.”

Leseprobe

FOURTH DOWN!

BY

RALPH HENRY BARBOUR

1920

© 2022 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383836230

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I.

Back to School

II.

New Quarters

III.

Sid Offers Advice

IV.

G. W. Tubb

V.

With the Second

VI.

Signals

VII.

Toby Makes a Call

VIII.

Tubb Tries Football

IX.

Yardley Plays Greenburg

X.

Toby Empties His Locker

XI.

Tom Fanning, Optimist

XII.

First Team Vs. Second

XIII.

Team-Mates Fall Out

XIV.

Toby at Quarter

XV.

The “Tough Bunch”

XVI.

Tubb Wins Promotion

XVII.

An “Accident”

XVIII.

A Quarter-Back Run

XIX.

Arnold Has a Thought

XX.

An Encounter on the Beach

XXI.

Tubb Barks a Knuckle

XXII.

A Visit to the Office

XXIII.

Tubb on the Trail

XXIV.

Frick Is Called Away

XXV.

Fourth Down

FOURTH DOWN

CHAPTER IBACK TO SCHOOL

“W

e ought to be there in about twenty minutes,” observed Arnold Deering, glancing at his watch.

One of his companions in the day-coach tossed the magazine he had been idly glancing through, to the top of the pile of suitcases beside him, yawned widely, and nodded without enthusiasm.

“If nothing happens,” he agreed.

“What’s going to happen, you chump?”

“Nothing, I suppose. Only, something might. There might be an earthquake, or the train might jump the track, or——”

“Or you might talk sense, Frank! As for jumping the track, this old train couldn’t jump a crack in the floor! I guess you’re wishing something would happen so you wouldn’t have to go back.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Frank Lamson answered doubtfully. “I guess I don’t mind—much. School’s all right after a day or two. It’s getting into the swing, just at first, that’s hard.”

“In the interest of education,” proclaimed Arnold pompously, “I move that summer vacations be abolished.”

“Put it the other way around,” said Frank, “and I’ll second the motion. Joking aside, though, summer vacations are fine, but they certainly spoil a chap for hard work.” He shook his head dolefully. He was a heavily-built youth of seventeen, but the heaviness was that of bone and sinew rather than of fat. With regular features, dark hair and eyes and a healthy skin, he was undeniably good-looking, although the mouth somehow suggested a sort of lazy arrogance and led an observer to the conclusion that he was not invariably as amiable as at present. He was almost painfully correct as to attire.

“Work!” sighed Arnold. “Why introduce unpleasant subjects? Ever since I struck Yardley fellows have dinned it into me that this year is the toughest of all. ‘If you think Third Class is hard,’ they said, ‘just wait till you’re in Second!’ It doesn’t sound good to me, Frank!”

“Piffle! Fellows always talk that way. Even First Class fellows shake their heads and tell you they’re the hardest worked bunch in school, and any one with a grain of sense knows that the last year’s a perfect cinch. Anyway, you don’t need to worry. You’re starting clean. I’ve got a condition to work off, worse luck. I’m the one who ought to be sore.”

“Too bad,” said Arnold sympathetically. “Still, ‘Old Tige’s’ bark is worse than his bite, Frank. You’ll get clear all right.”

“Hope so.” Frank leaned across the piled-up luggage to look through the window. A fleeting glimpse of the sun-flecked surface of Long Island Sound met his vision, and he frowned, mentally contrasting the lazy, frolic-filled days of the passing summer with the duties drawing nearer every minute. “Light House Point,” he said, nodding. “Greenburg in ten minutes.”

“If nothing happens,” quoted Arnold, with a smile. Like the boy opposite him, he was seventeen years of age, and, like him, too, he was extremely well-dressed. But in Arnold Deering’s case the attire appeared to stop short of effort, or it may have been that he was less conscious of it. While it is fair to call Frank good-looking it is no exaggeration to say that Arnold was handsome. A straight nose under a broad forehead, deep brown eyes, a mouth showing good-temper, and a round chin, all went to make up a countenance extremely attractive. He wore his dark brown hair brushed straight back, a style that went well both with his face and with his height and slenderness. There was nothing effeminate about him, though. He was not what fellows contemptuously call a “pretty boy” and his slim frame was well-muscled and suggested the best of physical condition.

“Don’t think I’d mind if something did happen,” answered Frank, rather disconsolately, “so long as it put off the evil day.”

“Cheer up, old thing!” laughed Arnold. “To-morrow you’ll be as gay as a lark, won’t he, Toby?”

The third member of the party, who, next the window, had been occupied with a magazine for the last half-hour, turned a pair of very blue eyes toward the speaker and smiled. Although he had been following the story closely, the conversation of his companions had not been entirely lost to him, and Arnold’s question had reached him between the last word on page 19 and the continuation on an elusive page 134. “I’d never expect to see Frank as gay as a lark,” he replied readily. “If you had said as happy as a seagull, though——” He returned to the search for page 134.

“Seagull?” protested Arnold. “The silly things never are happy! They’re always crying and making a fuss.”

“Oh, they’re happy enough,” said the other, with a twinkle in his eyes, “but they don’t want to think so!”

Arnold laughed and Frank said, “You go to the dickens, Toby,” but grinned a little as he said it. There had been a time when he would have taken Toby Tucker’s jest not so amiably, but closer intimacy with that youth had rendered his dignity less tender.

“Toby’s got you sized up, Frank,” laughed Arnold. “You do like to grouch a bit, you know.”

“We all do, at times,” said Toby, comfortingly. He found the page he was seeking and settled back again. But Arnold plucked the magazine from his hands and tossed it to the opposite seat.

“We’re nearly in Greenburg, T. Tucker,” he said. “Sit up like a gentleman and talk to us.”

Toby looked reproachfully at his friend and regretfully at the magazine. Then he smiled. He had rather a remarkable smile, had Toby. It made you forget that his nose was too short, his chin almost aggressively square, his tanned face too liberally freckled, his hair undeniably red. It made him almost good-looking and eminently likable. Tobias Tucker’s smile was a valuable asset to him, although he didn’t know it.

“What shall I talk about?” he asked. “Want me to tell you a dreadfully funny story?”

“What’s it about?” demanded Arnold, suspiciously.

“About old Cap’n Gaines,” replied Toby, innocently. “He——”

“Help!” cried the others with unflattering unanimity.

“If you ever try to tell that again, Toby,” added Arnold, very stern and very solemn, “we’ll——”

But what was to happen in such an event was never told, for what happened at that moment very effectually ended Arnold’s discourse. There was a terrific grinding of brakes, a loud hissing sound, and an irresistible tendency on the part of every one and everything in the day-coach to proceed hurriedly to the front door. Because of various obstructions none succeeded, but all did their best. Arnold landed in Frank’s lap and Toby draped himself over the piled-up luggage, his head hanging over the back of the seat ahead. A cloud of unsuspected dust filled the car as, with a series of emphatic and uncomfortable jerks, the train came to a standstill. To the accompaniment of a vocal confusion of cries, exclamations, and grunts, the occupants of the car disentangled themselves from each other or picked themselves from the floor.

“Get—off—me!” groaned Frank. “You’ve—broken—my neck!”

“What was it?” gasped Arnold, relieving the other of his unwelcome embrace. “Are we wrecked?”

“I am, anyway!” growled Frank. “Where’s my hat? Oh, thanks!” He accepted it from a dazed occupant of the seat ahead. Toby Tucker retired from his graceful position atop the suitcases and observed Arnold questioningly, his straw hat tilted down to the bridge of his nose. Arnold chuckled. “Guess it was Frank’s earthquake,” he said.

“Keep your places!” admonished a trainman, putting his head in the forward door. “Obstruction on the track! No danger!”

“Gee!” muttered Toby. “That was some stop, fellows!”

“It sure was!” agreed Frank emphatically, feeling doubtfully of his neck. “It nearly snapped my head off! And then Arn landed on me like a ton of bricks.”

“Let’s go see,” said Toby. “What’s this?” He raised a foot from which dangled Arnold’s hat. “I’m sorry. Sort of mussed, I’m afraid.”

Arnold took it, viewed it ruefully and put it on. “It’s all Frank’s fault,” he grumbled as he joined the exodus through the nearer door. “He insisted that something was going to happen, and it did!”

How near that something had come to being a catastrophe was revealed to them when they pushed their way through the throng at the head of the train. Not eighty feet distant from the pilot of the throbbing locomotive stood a lone box-car, its forward truck lodged against its rear. It was loaded and sealed and marked “Greenburg.” A curve in the track behind had hidden it from the fireman’s sight until there had remained just space in which to avert a collision.

“How do you suppose it got here?” asked Frank.

“Front truck got loose and the car broke its coupling, so they say,” volunteered a boy beside him.

“Hello, Billy,” greeted Frank. “You on the train? I didn’t see you. I suppose this will hold us up awhile, eh?”

“I thought they always had a caboose on the tail-end of a freight,” objected Arnold.

“I believe they do,” agreed Billy Temple, “but this car and some more were on a siding about a mile back and they were sort of switching ’em into the Greenburg yard. Hello, Tucker. What car were you fellows in?”

“Fourth, I guess,” answered Arnold. “If it hadn’t been for Frank, though, I’d have landed in the first when we stopped! Felt as if my spine was being pushed right through to the front of me!”

“Me too,” chuckled Temple. “There was an old codger in my car with a basket of eggs. He got on at that last stop we made. There wasn’t much room, so he kept the eggs in his lap. Then Mr. Engineer put the airbrakes on and—Bingo!”

“What happened?” demanded Arnold delightedly.

“Why, the old gentleman and the eggs went on top of a fat man in front. Talk about your omelets! Oh, boy!”

“Let’s go back and sit down,” suggested Toby when Temple’s narrative had been properly appreciated. “It’s too hot out here. And I suppose we won’t get started again for an hour.”

“More like two,” grumbled Frank. “They’ll have to send a wrecking train and lift that car out of the way. Rotten luck!”

“Hark to the plaintive wail of the seagull,” murmured Toby.

“That’s right, Frank,” Arnold chuckled. “Ten minutes ago you wanted something to happen to keep you from getting to Yardley, and now——”

“That’s all right,” answered Frank haughtily, “but it’s nearly four, and supper’s at six.”

“True, O Solomon! I get your viewpoint. There is much in what you say. Still, if we get moving again in an hour or so——”

“We might walk, if it wasn’t for the bags,” mused Toby. “It can’t be more than eight or nine miles.”

“Eight or nine miles!” moaned Arnold. “And on an empty stomach!”

“We-ell, I meant on the railroad,” said Toby demurely, “but if you prefer——”

“Wish we had a pack of cards,” said Frank gloomily as they returned to their car. “We might have a three-handed game of something. Or get Billy Temple in here.”

“I’m going to finish that story I was reading,” said Toby. “You two play.”

“Well, if we can find some cards,” began Arnold, leading the way to their seats. Then: “What’s the matter with the chap over there, Toby? Nose-bleed?” he asked.

Toby, following his friend’s gaze, saw a pale-faced, large-eyed boy of perhaps fifteen holding a crimson-stained handkerchief to his face. “Guess so,” said Toby. “Maybe he got bumped. Wonder if he knows how to stop it?”

“Do you?” Arnold asked, pushing by to his seat.

“Yes, I know four or five ways. Guess I’ll ask him.”

He left the others and walked back three seats to where the boy was hunched somewhat disconsolately beside an open window. He was a surprisingly unattractive chap, Toby thought, but maybe he couldn’t help that unwholesome white complexion. But he could help, Toby told himself a moment later, that very soiled collar he was wearing!

“Nose-bleed?” asked Toby smilingly.

The boy shook his head, looking up over the stained handkerchief with an expression of sullen suspicion in his staring brown eyes.

“What’s the trouble then?” Toby took the vacant seat. “Let me have a look, won’t you?”

After a second of hesitation the boy removed the handkerchief, revealing a short but deep cut on his upper lip. It was bleeding profusely. Toby clucked sympathetically. “How’d you get it?” he asked.

“I was getting a drink back there,” muttered the boy, “when the train stopped. It threw me against the arm of a seat, I guess. Anyway, first thing I knew I was on the floor.” His tone was resentful and his look seemed to hold Toby to blame for the accident.

“Too bad,” said the latter kindly. “Got another handkerchief with you?” The boy shook his head. “I’ll lend you one, then. I’ll get it and wash the cut well. You step back to the water tank.”

Toby returned to his seat and dragged his suitcase from the pile. “Fellow’s got a nasty cut on his lip,” he explained. “Fell down when the train slowed up and hit on something.”

“What are you going to do?” inquired Frank. “Operate on him?”

“Find a handkerchief for him.”

“Who is he? One of our chaps?” asked Arnold.

“I don’t know. He may be. Doesn’t look it. Get your enormous feet out of the way. I’ll be back in a sec.”

“If you want any one to administer the ether——” suggested Frank.

Toby laughed and joined his patient by the rear door. There he gave the wound a thorough washing, while the boy scowled and grunted. Then, seeing that the sides of the cut ought to be brought together, he left the other with a folded handkerchief pressed to the wound and made his way forward to the baggage car. When he returned he had a roll of surgeon’s tape and a wad of absorbent cotton. The boy protested in his sullen way against further repairs, but Toby overruled him. “You don’t want a nasty scar there,” he said cheerfully. “You hold this cotton there until I get the tape ready. That’s it. All right now. Hold steady, now. I’m not hurting you. There! Now we’ll roll this cotton in the handkerchief and you can stop the blood with it. I don’t think it will bleed much longer. Have you got far to go?”

“Wissining,” muttered the boy.

“Oh, do you live in Wissining?”

“No, I’m going to school there,” answered the other resentfully. “I thought maybe you were, too.”

“Why, yes, I am. You must be a new boy then.”

The other nodded. “I’ve never seen the rotten place,” he said.

“Really?” asked Toby rather coldly. “Well, I hope you’ll like it better than you think.”

The boy stared back in his sullen fashion. “Shan’t,” he muttered. Toby shrugged.

“That’s up to you, I guess.” He nodded curtly and moved away, feeling relieved at the parting. But the boy stopped his steps.

“Say, what’ll I do with this handkerchief?” he asked.

“Oh, throw it away, please,” said Toby.

If he had done so this story might have been different.

CHAPTER IINEW QUARTERS

A

t eight o’clock that evening, having reached Wissining only a little more than an hour late and done full justice to supper, Toby and Arnold were busily unpacking and setting things to rights in Number 12 Whitson, which, as those who know Yardley Hall School will remember, is the granite dormitory building facing southward, flanked on the west by the equally venerable Oxford Hall and on the east by the more modern Clarke. There were those who liked the old-time atmosphere of Whitson; its wooden stairways, its low ceilings, its deep window embrasures and wide seats; who even forgave many a lack of convenience for the sake of the somewhat dingy home-likeness. Perhaps, too, they liked to feel themselves heirs to the legends and associations that clustered about the building. On the other hand, there were scoffers dwelling more luxuriously in Clarke or Dudley or Merle who declared that the true reason for Whitson’s popularity was that the dining hall, known at Yardley as Commons, occupied the lower floor and that fellows living in the building consequently enjoyed an advantage over those dwelling in the other dormitories.

Not all the Whitson rooms were desirable, however. On the third floor, for instance, was one that Toby, when he looked about the comparative grandeur of Number 12, remembered without regrets. He had passed last year under its sloping roof in an atmosphere of benzine and cooking. The benzine odor was due to the fact that he had conducted a fairly remunerative business in cleaning and pressing clothes, the smell of cooking to the fact that the room’s one window was directly above the basement kitchen. This year the atmosphere promised to be sweeter, for Number 12 was on the front of the building, away from the kitchen, and Toby had retired from business.

There were moments when he viewed his retirement with alarm, for, although his father had assured him that sufficient money would be forthcoming to meet expenses if Toby managed carefully, he couldn’t quite forget that, should anything interrupt the prosperity of the boat-building business at home, there would be nothing to fall back on. But Arnold had made the abandoning of the cleaning and pressing industry a condition of his invitation to a share of Number 12. “Homer’s not coming back, Toby,” he had announced in August. (Homer Wilkins had been Arnold’s roommate the preceding year.) “I wish you’d come down to Number 12 with me. It won’t cost you much more than that cell up in Poverty Row; and that’s an awful dive, anyway. Of course, you can’t go on with that beastly, smelly clothes-cleaning stunt, but you weren’t going to anyway, were you? I mean, since your father’s business has picked up so this spring and summer you won’t have to, eh?”

Frankly, Toby had fully intended to. Being even partly self-supporting gives one a feeling of independence that one hates to lose. But Toby said nothing of that. He thought it over and, because he was very fond of Arnold, as Arnold was of him, and because Number 22 had been pretty bad at times, he yielded. This evening he was very glad that he had, as, pausing with a crumpled pair of trousers in his hand midway between his battered trunk and his closet, he viewed again the quiet comfort of the big square room. Wilkins had removed a few things, but they were not missed, and Arnold’s folks were sending down another chair and a small bookcase from New York for Toby’s use. A fellow ought, he reflected, to be very happy in such a place; and he felt renewed gratitude to Arnold for choosing him to share its comforts. Arnold might easily have picked one of several fellows as a roommate without surprising Toby: Frank, for instance. Arnold had known Frank longer than he had known Toby. Reflecting in such fashion, Toby remained immovable so long that Arnold, who had for the moment abandoned more important business to put together a new loose-leaf notebook under the mellow glow of the droplight on the big table, looked across curiously.

“What’s your difficulty, T. Tucker?” he asked. “Gone to sleep on your feet? Reaction, I suppose, after the near-trainwreck!”

“I was just thinking,” answered Toby slowly, “that this is an awfully jolly room and that it was mighty good of you to let me come in with you.”

“Well, the room’s all right. (How in the dickens does this thing catch?) I like it a heap better than those mission-furnished rooms in Clarke. Of course, next year I suppose I’ll try for Dudley, with the rest of the First Class fellows, although I don’t know about that, either. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll stick here. It’s getting a whole lot like home, Toby. But as for its being good for me to have you with me here, why, that’s sort of funny, T. Tucker. Guess you’re not the only one that’s—er—that’s benefited, what? Rather like it myself, if you must know. Homer and I got on pretty well, all things considered, but that was mainly because he’s too lazy to quarrel with you about anything. Personally, Toby, I like a row now and then. It sort of—clears the atmosphere, so to speak. That’s why I thought of you. You’ve got such a perfectly beastly disposition and such a rotten temper that I can have a scrap whenever I feel the need of it. So, you see, it was pure selfishness, after all, old thing.”

Toby smiled and went over to the closet with his burden. “We started with a scrap, anyway,” he said. “Remember it, Arn?”

“Perfectly. I intimated that your hair was sort of reddish and you didn’t like it. So you came at me like a cyclone and we both went into the harbor. I remember it perfectly. It started because you wanted twenty-four cents a gallon for some gasoline.”

“Twenty-two. You said you paid only twenty in New York.”

“Anyway, I offered you less than you asked, and you said you’d pump it out of the tank again, and——”

“Good thing I didn’t have to try it,” laughed Toby. “That was only a little over a year ago, Arn! Why, it seems years!”

“Much has happened since then, T. Tucker,” replied Arnold, tossing the notebook on the table. “Events have transpired. In the short space of—let me see; this is September—in the short space of fifteen months you were rescued from a living-death in the Johnstown High School and became a person of prominence at Yardley Hall!”

“Prominent as a cleaner and presser of clothes,” laughed Toby.

“Nay, nay, prominent as one swell hockey player, Toby, and also, if I mistake not, as a rescuer of drowning youths. Don’t forget you’re a hero, old thing. By the way, I wonder if young Lingard’s back. For your sake, I hope he isn’t. His gratitude to you for saving him from a watery death was a bit embarrassing to you, I thought!”

Toby smiled ruefully. “You didn’t think, you knew,” he said grimly. Arnold laughed.

“To see you slinking around a corner to evade the kid was killing, Toby! And he is such a little rotter, too! While you were rescuing, why didn’t you pull out something a little more select?”

“Oh, Tommy isn’t a bad sort really,” responded Toby earnestly. “He—he just didn’t get the right sort of bringing-up, I suppose.”

“Maybe. Personally, I always feel like taking him over my knee and wearing out a shingle on him! Well, this won’t get our things unpacked. Let’s knock off after a bit and see who’s back. Funny none of the gang has been in. Wonder if Fan’s back. And Ted Halliday.”

“I saw Fanning at supper,” said Toby.

“We’ll run over to Dudley after awhile and look him up. You like him, don’t you, Toby?”

“Fanning? Yes, but I don’t really know him as well as some of the other fellows. He’s football captain this year, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Arnold nodded and then frowned. “Sometimes I wish we’d elected some one else: Ted, maybe, or Jim Rose.”

“Why? I thought you liked Fanning a lot. And he was the whole thing last year in the Broadwood game, wasn’t he?”

“I do like him. He’s a mighty fine chap. And he’s a whale of a player. Only, what sort of a captain will he make? He’s too easy, to my way of thinking. He’s likely to fall for a lot of fellows who can’t play much just because they’re friends of his. I don’t mean that he will intentionally show favoritism, but he’s too plaguy loyal to his friends, Toby. To tell the truth, I’m half inclined to stay out of it this fall—No, that isn’t so, either. What I do mean is that I’m scared that Fan may keep me on even if I don’t really make good. And I’d hate that worse than poison. I want to make the team, but I don’t want fellows to wink and laugh and look wise about me. You know the sort of stuff: ‘Oh, Deering, ye-es, he’s all right. But it’s lucky for him Fanning’s a friend of his!’ That sort of guff. Of course, this new coach, Lyle, may be a chap with a mind of his own and not stand for any of the friend-of-my-youth stuff. I hope so. I’d feel better anyway. By the way, you haven’t changed your mind, Toby?”

“About football? No.”

“I wish you would. Why don’t you?”

“Lots of reasons,” answered Toby smilingly. “In the first place, I tried it last fall. In the sec——”

“You call that trying? You just went out with a whole mob of fellows and loafed around until they got tired of walking on you. Besides, you were out for the Second. The First’s a different proposition, son, especially now that you’ve made good in hockey. Every one knows that you’ll be hockey captain next year.”

“It’s more than I know,” said Toby good-naturedly. “Anyhow——”

“And you’re at least fifteen pounds heavier than a year ago. They said you were too light, didn’t they?”

“They meant in the head,” replied the other gravely.

“They were dead right, too! But, honest, old thing, joking aside——”

“Arn, I haven’t got time for football and I can’t afford it.”

“That’s what you said about hockey last winter. And you were so pressed for time that you copped a Ripley Scholarship! As for ‘affording’ it, where’s the expense come in?”

“Togs and things,” answered Toby. “And traveling expenses. Arn, if I went in for football and made the team—which I couldn’t do in a million years—I’d have to go back to sponging coats and pressing trousers, and that would make the room awfully smelly, and you wouldn’t like it a bit.” And Toby ended with a laugh.

“Piffle! All right, have your own stubborn way. You’ll miss a whole lot of fun, though.”

“And a whole lot of bruises! Anyway, Arn, one football hero is enough in a family. I’ll stay at home and cut surgeon’s plaster for you and keep your crutches handy and hear your alibis.”

“Idiot,” said Arnold. “Come on, dump that truck on the chair and let’s go over to Dudley. I want to hear some sensible conversation for a change.”

“You don’t mean you’re going to keep quiet all evening, do you?” asked Toby with concern.

CHAPTER IIISID OFFERS ADVICE

T

he school year began the next morning. Many new faces confronted Toby in the recitation rooms and some familiar ones were missing. Toby’s list of friends had not been a long one last year, although acquaintances had been many. It had been his first year at Yardley Hall, which fact, coupled with a fairly retiring disposition, had left him rather on the outside. It is always a handicap to enter school in a class below your friends, which is what Toby had done. Arnold and Frank, both a year older, had been in the Third, while Toby had gone into the Fourth. Consequently the fellows he had met through Arnold—Frank had not counted greatly as a friend last year—had few interests that were Toby’s. To be sure, in early spring, after he had made a success of hockey, things had been somewhat different. But even then he had remained a pretty insignificant person among the three hundred and odd that made up the student body of Yardley Hall School. Not that Toby cared or thought much about it. He was too busy getting through the year without calling on his father for further financial assistance to pay much attention to the gentle art of acquiring friends.